Review: Yuengling Brewery Tour

Tour America’s oldest brewery at the Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, Pa. The tour offers guests a walk-through of the historic, original brewery building with a few modern additions.

The tour begins by taking visitors through the older sections of the brewery, including the caves used to store beer before modern refrigeration methods. There are also Prohibition-era brick walls from when the government made Yuengling close them off. Your tour guide will share how the brewery survived the Prohibition, and how the Yuengling creamy came to be. The tour guide I had was informative and definitely not dry telling the stories.

A photo posted by Cody Darrah (@codydarrah) on Nov 13, 2016 at 12:48pm PST

Afterward, you will move on to view the brew kettles along with some murals that tell the story of the brewery’s past. There is also a stop at the Rathskeller bar before finally ending up at the bottling and canning line. After telling us about the bottling and canning process, our tour guide offered to take slow motion videos of the production line on visitor’s phones, especially the ones who were not particularly tech savvy. She also offered to take photos of our group, and for any of us in front of the brewery building.

The tour takes about 45 minutes depending on questions asked and the speed of the tour guide. After the tour, there is a tasting available with the option to purchase packaged beer and growlers. Your tour guide will now become your bartender. The guides were great at helping guests decide what to try depending on personal tastes.

A photo posted by Jill Spaeth (@innerspaeth) on Nov 26, 2016 at 10:43am PST

The tasting bar is connected to the gift shop and small museum, which is currently underway. As a fan of Yuengling, I found the tour entertaining and engaging without too much focus on the beer-making process. Your guide will ask about your knowledge of the beer-making process, and the history of beer and Prohibition so you are not hearing things repeated that your group has a handle on. While it is a small building compared to modern-day breweries, there is a lot of history to uncover and plenty to drink.

Yuengling Brewery

5^th & Mahantongo St.

Pottsville, Pa. 17901

570 622 4142